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Amazon has Office Depot in store

The e-tailer adds another retailer to its list of partners, signing an agreement that will allow Office Depot to sell its products through Amazon's online store.

Margaret Kane Former Staff writer, CNET News
Margaret is a former news editor for CNET News, based in the Boston bureau.
Margaret Kane
2 min read
Amazon.com has added another retailer to its list of partners, signing an agreement that will allow Office Depot to sell more than 50,000 products through its online store.

Under the deal announced Friday, Office Depot will offer office supplies, furniture, and technology products through a special store on Amazon.com's office products section.

Specific financial details of the deal were not released. Amazon will process transactions; Office Depot will manage inventory and product fulfillment. Office Depot will also provide customer service for product-related issues, although Amazon will handle any site-related customer-service issues.

"Our alliance with Amazon.com provides us the ability to effectively reach a vitally important and large customer segment of online personal-use shoppers," Office Depot CEO Bruce Nelson said in a release. "We believe this large and rapidly growing segment of customers that do not traditionally purchase their office product needs from office supply superstores exceeds $90 billion in annual office product purchases."

The company could use the boost; it said last week that it expected third-quarter sales at its North American stores open at least a year to slip by a few percentage points because of sluggish consumer spending.

Office Depot's new store will share a checkout process with Amazon, and be able to use other Amazon technology including search and customer reviews.

Services like that have helped Amazon sign up offline retailers including Target, Toys ?R? Us and Borders Group. Amazon's deals with retailers may allow it to become a major player in the e-wallet market, analysts said.

Many of those Amazon's partners have redirected their own Web pages completely to the Amazon store. But Office Depot said it would continue to operate its main store and its school.com site.